| SUPPORT
TO THE CEBU BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION FOUNDATION
Over
the last eight years, and thanks largely to crucial core funding
support provided by the British American Tobacco Biodiversity
Partnership, FFI has assisted the Cebu Biodiversity Conservation
Foundation (CBCF) in developing a wide-ranging, integrated biodiversity
conservation programme on Cebu Island (West-central Visayas,
Philippines).
 This
island is one of the world’s highest
conservation priority areas in terms of both numbers of threatened
endemic taxa and degrees of threat. The target area of the project
has been the forests of Nug-as which have 13,500 people in 2,435
households living in them within karst (limestone) mountain landscape
which produces 90% of commercial crops for the island. There
is little forest remaining on Cebu and these forest remnants
provide a home ith for a large percentage of the endemic and
threatened species on Cebu.
Through its work the CBCF has dramatically
transformed local understanding and awareness of the importance
of Cebu’s biodiversity; conducted
field research and trained local personnel, and made important
headway in developing longer-term habitat restoration and financial
sustainability plans. Crucially the project has enabled the much
closer involvement and empowerment of local communities and engaged
local government units and other key sectors in the active protection
and restoration of the island’s last few remaining native
forests and some of the world’s most endangered species and
subspecies. This experience has demonstrated the effectiveness
of developing and implementing biodiversity conservation strategies
that are both locally and scientifically based; i.e. strategies
that are responsive to local needs and capitalise on local skills,
but which also access innovation and best practice experience gained
elsewhere.
During the last eight years the CBCF has supported research and
published papers on the endemic black shama, Cebu flowerpecker
and Cebu cinnamon and provided information on threatened species
to key institutions. The project also trained hundreds of forest
wardens, students, youth volunteers and high school pupils and
provided training courses to hundreds of farmers on chicken rearing,
animal feed production and charcoal burning. Households within
the two key conservation areas were provided with livelihoods support.
The project planted 5000 trees of 36 species in 2006 alone which
resulted in the replanting of eight hectares of forest.
|
Q1/2008
